Research briefings

This page provides access to research briefings produced by the Libraries of the House of Commons and House of Lords and the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST). You can find research briefings by sorting by date, type, or one of 350 topics. Pick your options from the dropdown menus.

Glossary

Commons Briefing papers: Papers providing in-depth and impartial analysis on every major piece of primary legislation and on other topics of public and parliamentary concern. Regular statistics papers are also published.

Lords Library Notes: Authored publications by the research section of the House of Lords Library that provide analysis of Bills, subjects for debate in the House and other issues of interest to Members.

POSTbriefs: Responsive policy briefings from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology based on mini-literature reviews and peer review, typically commissioned by select committees and library research services.

POSTnotes: Proactive four-page policy briefings from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology based on reviews of the research literature, interviews with stakeholders and peer review, commissioned by the POST Board.

The Water Framework Directive requires the UK to achieve 'good' status of all water bodies by 2015, but in 2012 only 36% of water bodies in the UK met this standard. This note examines the requirements of the Directive; sets out some facts and figures for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and explains what happens if the requirements are not met.

Business and Consumer Confidence: Information on business and consumer confidence surveys, which is generally released ahead of official statistical data and can indicate changes to the economic outlook as well as turning points in the economic cycle.

This briefing paper analyses the results of the 2015 General Election. It includes the election results by country, region and party, as well as the full result and turnout for every UK constituency. This is the second edition of the briefing paper, which provides additional analysis and statistics. New chapters in this edition cover seats changing hands, the characteristics of voters for each party, the characteristics of candidates and MPs, the electorate and turnout, safe and marginal seats, by-elections during the last Parliament, polling day, and the marginality of constituencies. The full results are available for download in two CSV files. The election results shown in this Briefing Paper were provided by Returning Officers following the 2015 General Election.

This note outlines Government, NHS and other statutory bodies’ work to improve dementia diagnosis, care and support and research. It also includes statistics, tables and maps on age-adjusted dementia prevalence across the UK, including for each English Parliamentary constituency.